PurposeThe purpose of this study was to evaluate whether listeners with normal hearing perceiving noise-vocoded speech-in-speech demonstrate better intelligibility of target speech when the background speech was mismatched in language (linguistic release from masking [LRM]) and/or location (spatial release from masking [SRM]) relative to the target. We also assessed whether the spectral resolution of the noise-vocoded stimuli affected the presence of LRM and SRM under these conditions.

ResultsIn both experiments, listeners' intelligibility of noise-vocoded targets was better when the background masker was Dutch, demonstrating reliable LRM in all conditions. The pattern of results in Experiment 1 was not reliably different across the 6- and 12-channel noise-vocoded speech. Finally, a reliable spatial benefit (SRM) was detected only in the more challenging SNR condition (Experiment 2).

ConclusionThe current study is the first to report a clear LRM benefit in noise-vocoded speech-in-speech recognition. Our results indicate that this benefit is available even under spectrally degraded conditions and that it may augment the benefit due to spatial separation of target speech and competing backgrounds.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BCS-1431105, awarded to Navin Viswanathan, and by National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Grant DC000052 T32, awarded to Brittany T. Williams under a predoctoral traineeship.

Subscribe to view more

For full access to this article, log in to an existing user account, purchase an annual subscription, or purchase a short-term subscription.